Feeding Communities: Subsistence economy is more than cash and calories.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE

"Harvesting our personal food has been something that my family has always done," says Johon Atkinson, a community wellness specialist in Metlakatla. "We've always harvested off the land and been able to fill our freezers with wealth, with investments."

Atkinson is a full-time harvester of wild resources, in addition to his career in the cash economy. Hunters, fishers, and gatherers harvest an estimated 34 million pounds of wild foods annually, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's (ADF&G) Division of Subsistence. Those foods provide 25 percent of calorie requirements and more than the entire nutritional requirement for protein in rural communities.

Beyond calories, though, Atkinson explains that the subsistence economy provides a foundation for mental, physical, and spiritual health. In fact, some Alaska Natives believe the word "subsistence" is too reductive.

"I actually don't use that word when I'm talking about harvesting our foods," says Marina Anderson, the tribal administrator for the Organized Village of Kasaan and also a full-time harvester. Anderson explains that "subsistence" often refers to supporting oneself at a minimum level.

"Our ways of life are some of the richest ways of life, ways that connect us physically and spiritually to the lands and waters through our ways of coexistence," Anderson says. "It's not at a minimum level of keeping us alive."

Laws of the Lands

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 extinguished indigenous hunting and fishing rights, with the understanding that the state government would come to a new arrangement. However, many Alaska Natives argue that Congress didn't have the authority to trade away those rights in the first place.

"We're indigenous nations with sovereignty, and it's up to us to decide what and how we harvest," says Haliehana Alagum Ayagaa Stepetin, who teaches Alaska Native Studies at UAA while working on her PhD dissertation on subsistence lifestyles in Unangam Tanangin, Alaska's Aleutian Islands, through the University of California, Davis. Stepetin grew up practicing traditional fishing, hunting, and gathering with her father and aunties in the Aleutian island of Akutan.

The first state subsistence law in 1978 prioritized subsistence uses of fish and wildlife over personal and commercial use, but it defined subsistence users as all Alaskans equally. In 1980, Congress gave rural residents priority access to subsistence resources in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act(ANILCA).

"People who are living in rural Alaska are going to be generally more dependent on subsistence resources as a larger part of their household and community economy because they don't have grocery stores and also because of a cultural history of living off the land," explains Caroline Brown, the statewide program manager for the ADF&G Subsistence Division.

Even in rural...